The plugin for Watch Dogs models have been in a works for a pretty long time and was released few weeks ago. It was generally aimed to vehicles editing but has faced some obstacles related to physics. I have made a quick test conversion of the vehicle and was generally satisfied with the possible conversion abilities even though certain limitations apply.

ZModeler3 is available for download on the main site or can be upgraded fully via embedded autoupdate. Downloading an entire package is strongly recommended, so you get a properly-configured version at once. The rendering core was upgraded, so each file, including all shaders have been updated. You might not see the visual changes upon upgrade, as no new tools have been included or introduced.

Materials browser changes

The only visible changes you might notice are related to materials browser. The following options on material properties has changed:

Emissive color have been moved to "Advanced colors" group and got configuration options as the rest of advanced colors: e.g. it could be masked by some map/channel.

Ignore vertex color option can be turned on/off, so per-vertex color can store shader-specific information and not visualized as mesh color. For example, each color component could be used as transition for some texture maps.

U,V Tile replaces "Scale" of texture map. Tiling on U and V can be configured separately. The value of tile is inverse of scale, so the higher tile value, the smaller texture will appear on a model.

BUMPMAP texture slot could be configured to use .Alpha and .Green (or .Green and .Alpha) texture data, as these types are widely used.

Displacement texture could be applied on mutliple-diffuse bump-mapped materials. You can set MODE of each detail texture (DETAIL2 and/or DETAIL3) to be applied as "Displace" in User-defined options of material.

Load and Save materials option is added in materials browser. This option is added and implemented on current setup, but no of available plugins offer materials load/save at the moment. This feature was designed and made for the filter, that is currently under research and not included in this released.

Even if you are aware about ETS2 modding workflow, game data structure and files, you should still read this guide as it might give some valuable hints to improve your own workflow.

First of all, game resources are always packed into achieves, known as .scs (actually, .zip files renamed to .scs). Each achieve is mounted by the game to it's own virtual "resources" drive, so the game has a mapped location of each resource exactly the same way as you have your files located in folders and sub-folders on your hard drive, the only differences is that game accesses and loads (unpacks) each resource on demand only.

Before you start modding ETS2 you have to make the very first step: unpack game achieves into your local drive, so you have all the resources available as files. This routine is known as "unpacking the base", since the "base.scs" is generally the whole game resources you might see in game: models, textures, materials, effects and so on. I personally always unpack the base into "My Documents/Euro Truck Simulator 2" folder. Note, when game patch is applied, you should unpack the base.scs again. Once unpacked, you will see a lot of folders and sub-folders there:

This feature was available in ZModeler2 and is now ported into ZModeler3 to allow create and install your own localization for UI. As the base implementation or a template for another language packs, a Russian localization is provided. Since certain UI features are bounded to UI names, a specific installation of the language pack is required. First of all, you should backup your ZModeler3_profile.xml file, since it contains all your proffered settings, this is very similar to upgrading a version of ZModeler. Installing a language pack will overwrite some settings to predefined, so layout and size of certain dialog windows will change. Also, default hot-keys will get assigned when language is installed. Note, language pack comes with an installation XML script that is copied into Install folder. The script will do all the work, so if you change language to default and will try to revert back to some localization, a respective localization script should be placed into Install folder. This is not a must, everything will work without installation, but you will miss predefined hot-keys and dialogs layout. (read full story...)

ZModeler is oriented on low-poly modelling and precise control and accuracy of polygonal mesh should always be the aim of 3D artist. Consider you have created a box and chamfered it's edges for smoothness, but faced out the problem that you don't have enough cross-sections for some details:

Missing a multiple cross-sections could be a pain to find out, especially when you want them to be straight and accurate:

ZModeler3 is available for download on the main site or can be upgraded fully via embedded autoupdate. Downloading an entire package is strongly recommended, so you get a properly-configured version at once. Since release of ETS2 patch 1.8.x an incomplete upgrade of ZModeler to 3.0.7 was already published, this official release is equipped with additional updates that you might missed during pre-release. As always, you can keep your own configuration (ZModeler3_profile.xml) file to backup your preferred settings when downloading and installing a version from the site.

Collada .DAE import/exportThe filter for importing and exporting Collada .DAE files is now available in ZModeler. It is compatible with specification 1.4.1 but omits some of features like embedded animation data, splines, lights and physics scene data. The geometry import/export routines are quite robust and can handle variety of setups and configurations one might find in DAE files. This includes both, rigged and non-rigged geometry, multiple UV channels, per-vertex colors, polygons with holes and so on. A set of configuration options will help you import/export your scenes the way you need, since there are no well-defined rules on scene setup for Collada. To the moment, exports from 3dsMax, Maya and SketchUp were tested. Exports from ZModeler were not tested in mentioned apps. (read full story...)

Notes on ETS2 version 1.9 and higher:ETS2 AI was remastered in version 1.9 and higher, so some information in this guide is incorrect or obsolete. Such an information is populated with an additional explanation highlighted in bright blue color. If the only explanation marked states Obsolete, consider an entire description as obsolete, so it's no longer applies. If an extended information is specified, it can either extended previous description, or replace previous term when "(Obsolete)" is specified in the beginning. In case of replacing of description, only last term is considered obsolete.

For example:Option A is used to specify "A" behavior. It also generates "B" behavior. Obsolete. "B" behavior is not used, "C" behavior applies.This can be considered as Option A is used to specify "A" behavior. It also generates "B" behavior. in pre-1.9 exports, and as Option A is used to specify "A" behavior. "C" behavior applies. in post-1.9 exports. (read full story...)

ZModeler3 is available for download on the main site or can be upgraded fully via embedded autoupdate. Downloading an entire package is strongly recommended, so you get a properly-configured version at once. You can keep your own configuration (ZModeler3_profile.xml) file to backup your preferred settings.

Splines.Splines were restored and now available in ZModeler3. Splines and their control point have the following features (some should be configured in options):

Shared (linked) control point positions between different splines

Per-point segmentation (detalization) or automatic detalization

Three types of control points (affects incoming and outgoing spline segment): corner, bezier and bezier-corner

User-defined options can be set on spline and/or any control point

Spline and manipulators colors customization via settings menu

Per-spline color assignment can be configured in settings menu (and color is set in spline properties)

Drawing spline direction arrow can be configured in settings menu.

The following tools can deal with splines and perform specific tasks when applied to spline or spline control point:Attach - merges joined spline into one spline when applied on nodes level (splines should have a shared point already); merges splines into single spline when applied on manipulators level (a sort of "connect" operation is performed when one point is bridged/connected to another point with new spline segment) - no shared point required to attach this way. (read full story...)

The first video tutorial will animate the addon part for animated interior model. As an example, the ball is added and jumping animation is bind to steering wheel animation.Duration: 9minComplexity level: Intermediate

The recently released ZModeler 3.0.5 has an upgraded UV mapper that extends usage of mapping charts, whether they are parametric or not. The newly-introduced Stitchtool in toolbox is a short-cut to "Attach" tool, and allows to stitch charts that share edges. For simplicity, when you hover the chart, the neighbor charts will show red lines on shared edges:

Thus you can see whether certain chart could be stitched to something and where exactly ZModeler will stitch it. The same "shared edges" highlight is available on vertices level, so you can determine the exact point-to-point match before stitch, or use it for any other purpose: